Welcome to MSN Spaces 10.5! Lots of new features. Check the Spacecraft and Mike Torres for a full rundown. Moz might post something, too. My team has spent the past few days with the Spaces team and the MSN Networking team hammering out last minute hang-ups and blocking issues to bring Spaces 10.5 to you without service interruption.

One new feature I love? The /members node has been removed from the URL for individual spaces. What was http://spaces.msn.com/members/tom is now http://spaces.msn.com/tom. Why is this a favorite feature? I’m a human friendly URL advocate.

Another favorite change? Comments are sorted in ascending chronological order. The sorting order used to be the opposite.

For the past few days, the Service Operations team (that's my team) and the Dev team camped out into the late hours getting the bits out the door. It's a fun process, a good chance for bonding and getting through issues as they are encountered. It's hard work.

I feel very fortunate to work with a great group of people. Everyone pulled together to help out and we deployed successfully as a result.

What's it look like to deploy new Internet services? See attached photos.

Yesterday was my five year anniversary at Microsoft. I could ramble. I won’t.

I have worked in MSN Service Operations for those five years, first as an engineer and later as a program manager. Apart from music, my career in MSN is the only thing I have focused on for five or more consecutive years. This is a bit of a milestone then.

I love working at Microsoft because it’s hard. For all of its accomplishments, this company has only just started to make progress toward what computing should be. There is so much more to do; even with fifty thousand employees, we can’t make progress toward solving these problems quickly enough.

We need more people who are excited about making computing better. If you have ever thought about working at Microsoft, drop me a line at tomharpel@hotmail.com.

On reaching this milestone, I want to thank all of the great people here who have helped me to get better at what I do over the last five years: Elango, Saravanan, Donald, Heather, Lilli, Janene, Dave, Brent, David, Steven, Deepak, Joe, Colin, Catherine, Frederic, MC, Bill, Greg, Larry, Todd, the list goes on. There are so many great people here.

I grew up in Redmond, and always believed I would one day work at Microsoft. Now, after ten years at other companies and another five at Microsoft, I feel like a part of this company; I feel personally responsible for Microsoft's success. I will apply myself to making this company called Microsoft better.

This can be a better place to work. I can do better. My colleagues can do better. Our products must improve. We need to be better corporate citizens and members of the community. It’s time to get on with the work of making this place better. On to the next five years! Yar!

I am reposting here my friend Brian's excellent rhetorical response to some talk radio gay bashing he had this misfortune of hearing while driving through southwest Washington.

On a recent cross-country drive, I had the displeasure of listening to Christian AM talk radio. Navigating the wet roads of central Oregon at 3am, I listened as two men discussed the evil and corrupt ways of homosexuals. With numerous quotes from the bible and slippery slope arguments, these voices on the radio told their audience that gays and lesbians were angry, lost souls hoping to topple Christianity. As a gay man who was raised in a religious household, I really wished I could call in and debate their venomous statements. Unfortunately, being out of cell phone service range, I have to settle on writing my argument down and hope that it falls into the laps of people who might have been suckered by the words of fundamentalists and assholes. I wish I could quote these speakers, but instead Ill simply address each of their arguments. Chances are youve heard a few of these claims before.

Homosexuality is unnatural.
Really? Says who? It happens all over the animal kingdom. I fail to see how my first crush at the age of four was an act of deviancy. And those strange feelings I had in the fifth grade for pop singer Rick Astley certainly werent consciously constructed by me. Hell, I couldnt even figure out why I was so obsessed with a guy who wrote such awful music. It took another few years to put the pieces together. So how does someone argue that human emotions are unnatural? Do you mean that the fact that gays and lesbians cant procreate through their acts of intimacy makes it unnatural? Does that mean infertile heterosexual couples are unnatural? Is kissing unnatural? Is it possible that blowjobs are, in fact, supernatural?

AIDS is Gods way of punishing gays.
So what was God punishing us for with syphilis? Colonialism? God must really be upset with Africans, because theyre really getting the worst of the AIDS epidemic. What exactly did entire villages of African people do to warrant decimation? Maybe God is lashing out at people not using condoms and making too many babies. Lets face it; the current population growth cant sustain itself for very long. Either people stop having babies or God brings on war, famine, disease, and natural disasters. Hell, weve had a whole lot of that in the last year. Maybe God makes people gay as a positive alternative to bringing on another plague. Or perhaps shit just happens and God doesnt have any vindictive motives behind it. Pat Robertson claims that the Florida hurricanes were punishment for the gays in South Beach. Hey Pat, maybe God is pissed at Jeb, the 2000 election, and Pensacola abortion bombers. And Fred Phelps, please quit protesting dead soldiers funerals. They didnt die because America is tolerant of gays. They died because our Christian president sent them off to an unjustified war.

The gay lifestyle is unhealthy
Im going to need to see some statistics before I even try to tackle this one. I do know that nearly half of teenage suicides are committed by teens that are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation. Before you attack someones predisposed needs for affection, why dont you look at the environment these people endure? Gay people are criticized and attacked every day. People live in the closet out of fear. No one wants to be the next Matthew Sheppard. No one wants to be disowned, ostracized, shunned, beaten, humiliated, or excommunicated. People want to live with the people they love, not live alone or in a lie. Drug abuse, suicide, and other self-destructive behavior should be expected from people who are routinely told they are inherently evil. Tell a kid that hes bad and rotten every day of his life, and hell grow up to be a bad and rotten kid. Any DSHS social worker can tell you that.

Gays are trying to corrupt the institution of marriage
This is usually said in the same breath as the gay lifestyle is unhealthy and immoral. Of course we sleep around! What other choice does one have in a society that doesnt accept or recognize our relationships? What options do we have? Its almost as if conservative Americans were okay with gays as long as they were in the closet or in bathhouses where they could pretend we didnt exist. But when men hold hands on the streets or expect others to recognize theyre in love and committed to each other, well, thats just wrong. If youre so concerned about the institution of marriage, why not focus your efforts on combating easy divorce laws or picket reality shows like Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?. I think most gay people would agree that you can keep the word marriage, we just want to be able enter the same legal and civil relationship that allows us to declare our love for each other. And wed like to be able to visit each other in the hospital and gain all the other special rights that come with being married.

Homosexuality is a sin. The Bible says so.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And while youre compiling your own list of moral transgressions, lets look at what the bible actually says. Im going to borrow heavily from the work of Walter Wink, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary here. In his article Homosexuality and the Bible, he points out that in addition to men laying with men, the bible prescribes equal condemnation towards: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, marriage with non-Israelites, naming of sexual organs, masturbation, and birth control. The bible does permit, however, things like: polygamy, levirate marriage (if the husband dies without producing offspring, the woman becomes the wife of his brother by default), prostitution, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and marriage to young women (girls of 11 to 13 years of age). And really, the bible says nothing about homosexuality. It attacks men having sex with men in pagan rituals and in the form of rape on the battlefield, but never acknowledges homosexuality as a sexual orientation. Also bear in mind that Jesus says nothing in regards to gays and lesbians, and that Jesus time on Earth officially ends the Old Testament and a huge chunk of biblical law. However, Jesus did speak out against divorce, so Im not sure why that issue has fallen by the wayside.

Homosexuality is gross
To quote Shakespeare, The lady doth protest too much, methinks. If youre not gay, then why should you care what gay people do? Freud believed that homophobia results from peoples own uncertainty regarding their orientation. So next time you hear two Christians on the radio discussing the abhorrence of homosexuality, rest assured that they secretly long to get in each others pants.

Brian plays bass in These Arms Are Snakes and Onalaska, and sings and plays guitar in Roy. He and Reno married in 2004.

This rumor is too hot and weird to ignore: Bill Clinton will replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft’s president. I like Steve a lot, but Jesus, if Bill Clinton took the helm, that would be radical. And I thought the speculation that Microsoft was buying Yahoo! was exciting.

In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea and Soft Bulletin are probably the two greatest American records produced in the 1990’s. I’m excited to report that Soft Bulletin will at last receive a much-deserved reissue. Pitchfork reports:

In the meantime, the 1999 F'Lips masterpiece The Soft Bulletin will be reissued on DVD on January 31. In addition to the full album, remastered in glorious Dolby 2.0 and 5.1 sound, the DVD will include a buttload of outtakes, radio sessions, and videos.

I added this release date to my Outlook calendar and will be duly counting the days. This news is almost as welcome as last year’s Smile re-release.

I just had lunch with Greg, a person—like Douglas—who I first met through Flickr before realizing that he too worked at Microsoft. We discussed the current Spaces situation, digital photography and musicianship. On the last two, Greg is notable for being a drummer, and for taking great photos at shows in Seattle, most recently as an official photographer for the great KEXP.

We discovered we worked on the same campus when I recognized fellow MSN employee Rick in Greg’s photo series regarding a beard growing contest.

From this article: “There have been recent hints that Google, like other firms, could be wrestling with its data demons. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, the firm’s capital expenditures more than doubled, growing from $259.9 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2004, to $592.4 million for the same period in 2005. Google expects to spend more than $800 million on property and equipment, including IT infrastructure, land, and buildings, to help manage and expand its operations during 2005.”

More speculation here, where in that author makes a case for Google’s telco ambitions.

I sold a few items on eBay recently, among them a wooden wine glass rack and a Roomba vacuum. I received $20 for the wine rack, but wound up paying $35 to ship it (unusual size).

The Roomba recipient paid $100 but was not satisified with the condition (the virtual wall was missing and the battery holds a 45 minute charge). Rather than press the issue, I decided the simplest course of action was to refund the Roomba buyer her $100, no questions asked. I also asked her to keep the unit. Why bother with the additional hassle of UPS receiving, in which I inevitably need to drive to the UPS center in South Seattle to pick up my shipment, etc.

Net of my recent eBay transactions: -$15.

eBay is a pain in the ass. Go Fremont!

When Mike and I get a beer, the talk gets weird fast. Last night, we discussed China, the Singularity and Microsoft, sometimes all in the same breath. We are master bullshitters. We discussed this reading list:

Cryptonomicon by Seattleite Neal Stephenson. Everything a thick, mass market paperback should be. Don’t miss Stephenson’s great Wired mega-piece, Mother Earth Mother Board, a riff on laying cable in southeast Asia. More Wired(Stephenson.

How To Survive a Robot Uprising : Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion by Daniel H. Wilson. Humor. Sarcasm. Truth. I believe the robots will win. This book is printed on heavy, glossy paper and features cool designs.

The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil. Are these ideas good, evil or inevitable? Mike and I talked around this one a lot. Mike, being a smart person, brought a wholly new idea to the table, one that Kurzweil didn’t touch on in his book: the first person to upload their brain will probably ensure that they are the only person to ever upload their brain.

An uploaded brain can think much faster than a biological one, and therefore will be able to out think meat brains to devise new ways to ensure the uploaded brain retains its position of power. Yes, Mike and I believe that people are inherently bad. I think Kurzweil’s vision is one of techno-fascism, an icky accusation that I should qualify with this fact: I reached this conclusion on two beers.

It’s always a great time Mike. We’ll do it again soon.